Project Orion: NASA's Next Spaceship Takes Shape

This schematic details NASA's next spaceship Orion, which will be built by contractor Lockheed Martin.

Credit: NASA.

The pieces
are coming together for NASA's next spaceship Orion
as space agency engineers begin working with lead contractor Lockheed Martin to
shape the vehicle's cockpit.

"We're
bringing the design teams together and looking at the features of this so that
we can adjust and have one integrated concept," NASA's Orion project manager
Caris 'Skip' Hatfield told SPACE.com this month, adding that astronauts
are key in the design process. "We don't want to deliver them a cockpit and
have them hate it."

The Orion
cockpit is just one of many features under review by NASA and Lockheed
engineers as the agency discusses the requirements necessary for the
capsule-based spacecraft, which is expected to begin manned flights to the International Space
Station (ISS) in 2014 and return astronauts to the
Moon by no later than 2020.

Engineers are
using a Lockheed Orion mock-up, along with a NASA-built counterpart
at the agency's Johnson Space Center, to set out a definitive design for the
post-shuttle era spacecraft. The contractor then opened a mock-up of the spacecraft
to reporters at its Houston-based Exploration Development Laboratory this
month.

"This is a
long way from ready-to-cut metal," NASA astronaut Lee Morin, who is helping to develop
the avionics and crew systems for Orion vehicles, said in an interview. "But it's
a very important step in that direction."

NASA tapped Lockheed
to build the solar-powered Orion vehicle on Aug. 31. The spacecraft is designed
to succeed NASA's three space
shuttles - Discovery,
Atlantis
and Endeavour
- which are set to be retired by September 2010.

VIDEO: A New Era of Space Exploration
Video animation of how NASA plans to get back to the Moon by 2018.

While the
Orion vehicles owes much of its capsule look to NASA's Apollo vehicles, which
carried astronauts to the Moon and Skylab space station during the late 1960s
and early 1970s, its updated interior and avionics will bring the design
squarely into the 21st century.

"The Apollo
wasn't really in the computer age," Cleon Lacefield, Lockheed's Orion program
manager, told SPACE.com during a tour of a spacecraft mock-up. "We are
going to have smart [computer screens] and there will be a keyboard in between,
and from that you can receive all the information you need. So you don't have
to have a zillion and one switches."

With a
diameter of about 16.5 feet (five meters), Orion
capsules are expected to have about 2.5 times the habitable volume of their
Apollo predecessors, with all primary systems routed through a fold-out panel
of touch screens that swings into place above the pilot and commander seats
located beneath the primary windows.

"It's going
to be a lot larger than Apollo," Lacefield said. "The whole idea is to maximize
volume."

At least
two more windows, one to either side of the pilot and commander seats, and one
hatch portal are planned for Lockheed's current Orion design. Like NASA's
Apollo vehicles, the entry hatch is mounted to Orion's side while a docking
tunnel - for either the ISS or lunar vehicles - opens at the top.

Two launch
arrangements - a six-seater for ISS-bound flights and four-person array for
lunar missions - are on the drawing board, with the seats themselves made up of
foldable metal frames connected by sturdy webbing.

"These
seats are designed so that if you lost two of the four parachutes during
landing, the crew is secure," Lacefield said, adding that the seats are also
designed to keep astronauts safe should their capsule tip over to one side
after touchdown. "There's a lot of capability in these seats."

Lacefield
said that storage space will line the floor - on Earth - of Orion in the form
of a wall of lockers, while the area directly opposite of the main windows is
reserved for electronics, life support and computer equipment. The rest of the
walls, he added, are expected to be usable free space.

Meanwhile,
Morin and his fellow astronauts have been working to best identify exactly what
key systems Orion crews will need to operate, the best shape for windows and other
features.

"We made it
our business to go out and see as many cockpits as we could," Morin said,
adding that astronauts examined the flight decks of the military's F-22
jet fighter, the massive Airbus A380
aircraft, as well as commercial and business jets. "We aren't missing some
good technologies and some good ideas."

The goal,
Morin said, is to establish a fundamental philosophy for astronaut controls
aboard Orion that can then be transferred to future
lunar-bound spacecraft.

"We're
looking at trying to have as flexible a system as we can," Morin said. "And we
certainly have it in the back of our minds, of how we can use this experience
for future vehicles."

Of solar
wings and heat shields

One of the
key departures from NASA's past crewed spacecraft - ISS notwithstanding - is the
addition of two solar wings to power Orion's service module, which will house
most of the vehicle's systems and main engine. NASA's Apollo capsules relied on
fuel cells, which also power space shuttle systems in orbit today.

"It adds a
different set of things you've got to pay attention to," Hatfield said, adding
that the solar panels must work every time. "You want to get up to orbit and
deploy those arrays right away otherwise you have to turn around and come home
because you have no power."

NASA also
awarded a $14 million contract to
Huntington Beach, California's Boeing Co. this month to develop the vital ablative
heat shields that will protect Orion vehicles as they reenter the Earth's
atmosphere at speeds of 16,700 miles per hour (26,876kilometer per
hour) from the ISS, and up to 25,000 miles per hour (40,233kilometers
per hour) on a return trip from the Moon.

Hatfield
said there are still many other components of NASA's renewed lunar exploration program
that are still yet to be awarded to contractors, among them: planned lunar
habitats, rovers, rocket stages and engines.

"Now
that we're all together, it's just amazing," Hatfield said. "It's just great to
see the excitement and enthusiasm."

Tariq joined Purch's Space.com team in 2001 as a staff writer, and later editor, covering human spaceflight, exploration and space science. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Google+, Twitter and on Facebook.